Mark Bray | |
|---|---|
| Citizenship | American |
| Occupation | Associate professor |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Rutgers University |
| Thesis | The anarchist inquisition: Terrorism and the Ethics of Modernity in Spain, 1893-1909 (2016) |
| Doctoral advisor | Temma Kaplan |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | History |
| Sub-discipline | Anti-fascism |
| Institutions | Rutgers University |
Mark Bray is an American historian and scholar of anti-fascism. He has been a professor of history at Rutgers University since 2019 and previously taught at Dartmouth College. [1] [2] [3] He is the author of The Anarchist Inquisition, [4] Translating Anarchy [5] [6] and Antifa:the Anti-Fascist Handbook . [7]
Bray has organized for the Occupy Wall Street movement. [8] In wake of the 2017 Unite the Right rally,Bray was hosted on a number of news outlets,including NBC and NPR,to comment on the topic of political radicalism. In one instance,he stated that "when pushed,self-defense is a legitimate response to white supremacist and neo-Nazi violence". After he was accused by conservative groups of endorsing violence,Dartmouth College,his employer at the time,disavowed his statement. 100 faculty members came to Bray's defense,writing that Dartmouth officials had allowed his critics to distort his remarks and that Bray had received death threats as a result. [9]
After President Donald Trump labeled Antifa a terrorist organization in an Executive Order,the Rutgers University chapter of the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA (TPUSA) launched a petition on October 2,2025,calling for the university to fire Rutgers professor Bray,who had published a book titled Antifa:The Anti-Fascist Handbook in 2017. The petition referred to him as "Dr. Antifa" and called him an "outspoken,well-known antifa member" and financier of Antifa. His home address was published on social media. [10] After receiving death threats,he and his family fled to Spain on October 8. [10] Their booking for a flight on October 7 was cancelled by unknown persons after they had received their boarding passes and checked their bags. [10] [11] [1] [12] On October 5,a petition calling for the dissolution of the Rutgers TPUSA chapter was launched on change.org which,as of October 9,has collected 4,000 signatures. [12]